In this grant application, a group of ten NIH-funded investigators from the newly established Graduate Center for Nutritional Sciences (GCNS) at the University of Kentucky requests funds to purchase the FLA- 5000 imaging systems from Fuji film Medical Systems. Among commercially available phosphor imagers/imaging systems, the FLA-5000 has been carefully chosen to meet the research objectives of our group of investigators. The FLA-5000 system offers exceptional versatility of multi-format detection systems and has been designed to perform radioisotope, fluorescence, and chemiluminescence detections. The FLA-5000 imaging system will be extensively used by the major users in a variety of molecular and cellular methods. Indeed, such a system would be the essential resource for our daily research applications. However, it is predicted that the most frequent measurements will include analyses of gene and protein expression, as well as binding activities of specific transcription factors. Research of the major users of the FLA-5000 is focused on vascular biology in relationship to the development of atherosclerosis and/or vascular pathologies in AIDS or Alzheimer's disease. The major advantage of purchasing the FLA-5000 imaging system will be facilitation of our work on NIH-funded grants. In addition, free access to this equipment would help to recruit new faculty to GCNS and allow for ample opportunities to generate preliminary data for future NIH grant applications.